The parallels between James Ford and Bruce Wayne are pretty rad. Each uses his origin to create another identity to help him deal with his emotional trauma. Just as Batman is the alter ego to Bruce Wayne, Sawyer is James’ alter ego. Both of them are constantly struggling with losing themselves to their alternate identity. Each chooses to be this other person and spends most of his life as him. In the final panel Sawyer might as well be saying, “Who the hell is James Ford?”

One could argue that they differ in their outcomes. Obviously Batman fights crime while Sawyer commits it, right? Actually, this is another similarity! During his formative years, Bruce Wayne lives like a criminal and becomes a master of his craft in order to better know his parents’ killer. He is eventually able to use that training to fight crime. James chooses the life of crime and becomes a master confidence man for the same reasons. We are just introduced to him before he has completed this phase of his training. The fact that James eventually becomes head of Dharma security and later a police detective in his afterlife is evidence that he and Bruce Wayne share similar destinies.

Who knows. Perhaps Sawyer leaves the island and becomes the crafty vigilante known only as Conman, swindler of con artists!

The main thing that sold me on the Sawyer/Juliet relationship (aside from the actors) was that Juliet always called him “James”. So she met him as the con-artist, but loved the real James Ford (or LaFleur).